Carrot Souffle

I’m sure you’re thinking “Carrot Souffle? What in the world?”

I know – I know – but bear with me here…

A few years back, Dave and I attended a holiday dinner party at his former bosses house, and his wife did a bang up job with dinner!  I remember sitting down to the table with bug eyes at how amazingly delicious everything looked – except for this one orangey looking thing, covered with nuts.  I started to sweat, because it’s really in poor taste to not try everything at a dinner party, so I scooped a little teeny smidgen of it, and went at it with my fork in one hand and my glass of wine in the other, just in case I needed an emergency wash down.

I took my first teeny little bite, small enough that I could taste what I was eating but not so much so that if I was about to gag it would be totally obvious – and thought “oooh, mmmm….this is pretty good actually.”  My next bite was bigger, and after only a couple bites my small little scoop was gone – but I wanted more! So I took seconds….thought about thirds but didn’t want to embarrass Dave in front of his co-workers by stuffing my face.  I knew I had to have the recipe and finally, she emailed the recipe to Dave and he forwarded it to me, and since then, it’s become a staple at Thanksgiving and Christmas, like the mashed potatoes or green bean casserole.  It’s a light and fluffy combination of pureed carrots and lots of other ingredients that are better not to know – but luckily for you, I’m gonna share them, right now!

Carrot Souffle
*Dave’s former bosses fabulous cook of a wife! (guess I should have gotten her name, eh?)

INGREDIENTS
*yields enough for a 9×13″ baking pan for a larger crowd – halving it would be just enough for an 8×8″ dish

4 lbs carrot, cooked and pureed

12 eggs
(I know – seems like a lot!)

1 & 1/3 cups sugar

8 tbsp flour

4 tsp baking powder

4 tsp vanilla

few dashes of cinnamon & nutmeg

For the topping

1 cup cornflake crumbs

4 tbsp. brown sugar

2 & 1/2 tbsp. butter, melted

1 cup chopped pecans

1)Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare your baking dish by greasing the bottom and sides with butter or non-stick cooking spray.

2) Cook the carrots in boiling water until fully cooked through.  Puree them with an electric mixer or food processor and allow to cool completely.  In the mean time while they’re cooling, you can prepare the topping by pulsing the corn flakes in a food processor (or just crushing with your hands in a ziplock), then adding them to the brown sugar, melted butter and pecans.

3) Once the carrots are completely cooled off (the eggs will cook when you add them to the carrots if they haven’t cooled enough), add all of the other ingredients and blend with a mixer until fully combined.

4) Pour carrot mixture into the dish and then top with cornflake/pecan topping.  Feel free to make more of the topping if you’d like – it is quite delicious!

5) Bake souffle in preheated oven for 1 hour.

This Carrot Souffle is a sweet treat for your tastebuds to take bites of in between the turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and….

Is it Thursday yet?